The Deviants. C.J. Skuse

      ‘Almost three.’

      There was a depressed silence.

      ‘I’ve never seen him go at anyone like he does with you,’ I said, returning to the toilet cubicle with another batch of wet compresses. ‘You used to be such good mates.’

      ‘It’s because I know his secret. He thinks I’ll tell everyone. But I haven’t. I wouldn’t.’

      ‘What secret?’ My phone buzzed in my pocket. Without looking, I knew it was a text from Max.

      Corey shrugged. ‘I promised I wouldn’t tell.’

      Automatically, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked the message.

       Are you done with education yet? Fancy coming over to mine? The olds are out. We’ve got all afternoon. Maxxx

      I turned off my phone and looked back at Corey. ‘School’s over now. I don’t have anywhere to be. So what’s Zane’s secret?’

       ‘Did he tell you Zane’s secret?’

6

       An Adventure Beckons

      No, he wouldn’t tell me. He’d sworn to Zane that he would keep his secret, and he wasn’t going to budge. That was the kind of boy Corey was. If not for his condition, he’d have been perfect for the SAS; no way was anything going to break him. He was a much better person than me.

      Zane had gone by the time we trooped down the hill on our quest for Mort. Thank God. He’d always been a bit weird as a kid – he ate too much, swore too much, he insisted on always challenging us to duels or fights. He had this stupid habit of hiding our things and making us look for them and he was also the stopper of sneezes – surely the most evil of all vices. But at school, these things had been amplified. He swore at teachers, shagged around, picked fights with any ‘poof’ who dared to argue with him. Corey was exactly the kind of geek a brainless beefcake like Zane Walker grown up would bully, but I still didn’t understand why you’d pick on someone who’d been one of your best friends.

      We looked everywhere for Mort – all the Rittmans’ businesses, the pubs, up and down the High Street, the bins in the alley at the back of the seafront hotels, Tesco car park, and finally the pier. Corey went inside the kiosk to ask the manager if he’d seen him – sometimes cats went there for fish scraps. It was starting to drizzle, and Max rubbed his hands up and down my arms. The breeze from the sea was a cold one, and my cheeks were getting sore with wind chill. Max must have been freezing too. He only had his Street Reaper sleeveless hoody on,

      ‘He’s a bloody nightmare, isn’t he?’ he said, teeth beginning to chatter.

      ‘Dressed in a daydream,’ I added, moving his hair from his eyes and cuddling him in close. He looked good today. He was wearing the basketball vest I’d bought him for his birthday, skinny jeans and his new Vans. ‘You saw Zane hanging around, didn’t you? Opposite Corey’s house?’

      ‘Yeah, I did.’

      ‘I don’t want to leave him on his own today, Max. Just in case.’

      Just then, Corey came out of the shop with a massive bag of sweets, crisps and cans.

      ‘For you guys,’ he said. ‘For helping me look for Mort.’

      ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘But we should get back. Maybe Mort’s gone back to yours?’

      Corey shook his head. ‘He won’t. He’s too scared.’ His face radiated terror. ‘Oh my God – what if Rosie’s got him?’

      ‘Why would she have him? She lives in the back of beyond. It’s a bit unlikely,’ I said, trying to head him off.

      ‘Ooh, I dunno,’ said Max, suddenly enthusiastic. ‘If a cat’s gone missing in suspicious circumstances, Roadkill Rosie’s got to be involved, hasn’t she? Old Witchy Woo herself.’

      The Brynstan-on-Sea grapevine had declared years ago that Rosie Hayes was a witch. Any animal that went missing, Rosie was the prime suspect. Sometimes we’d seen her as kids, hanging out at the farm with Fallon, but more often than not she’d be out in the tractor, or just going somewhere in the ‘Torture Truck’. People said worse about them now: Fallon had been expelled for sleeping with a teaching assistant, and people said now she was some kind of prostitute. Rosie was a gypsy, possibly even a serial killer. They stole cattle, had bats in their cellar, fed their pigs on human remains. There was talk of skulls in the freezer, body parts left out for the bin men, even an amputated you-know-what in the kettle on her stove. You know how people talk – rumours appear like cracks in egg shells and before long giant eagles have taken to the air.

      Neil had done a lot to help spread those rumours.

      ‘I reckon Mort’ll be in a pie by now,’ said Max. ‘Ooh, I’ve got a hell of a peck on for Mort ’n’ chips. Remember Rosie’s suspicious stews? You never saw the same cat twice round their house. And the stories Jess used to tell us about Witch’s Pond?’

      ‘Stop winding him up,’ I said. ‘All that stuff about the cannibalism and the Witch’s Pool is crap. We know Rosie – at least, we used to.’

      But Corey wasn’t laughing. ‘She might have picked him up, just by accident. She does that – we know she does. The farm was always crawling with stray cats when we used to go there. Could we go out and look? Just to see?’

      ‘No way!’ said Max, the smile wiped off his face. ‘My dad would never forgive me.’

      Corey looked confused so I filled him in. ‘It was because of Rose that they recorded an open verdict at Jessica’s inquest. Rose insisted she saw her walk in front of the bus. On purpose,’ I added, quietly.

      ‘Stupid cow,’ Max grumbled. ‘Mum’ll go loopy if she knows we’ve even thought of going out there.’

      ‘It’s unlikely Rosie picked up Mort anyway,’ I told Corey. ‘I vote we go back to yours.’

      ‘No! Please, we have to try. Missing animals always end up there.’

      ‘Corey, come on, be logical. Rosie never comes into town any more.’

      ‘But we’ve tried everywhere else. Please?’ This time, he was brimming tears, his eyes all huge behind his glasses. Going to Whitehouse Farm meant nudging a hornets’ nest, as I knew perfectly well, but I couldn’t talk him out of it. He seemed desperate.

      ‘Fine, we’ll go out to Rosie’s,’ I sighed. Max made an outraged noise at once. ‘We won’t stay long. Your parents won’t ever know we were there. You can drive us, can’t you?’

      ‘Uh, no,’ he scoffed. ‘My car’s only two months old. Some of the roads out that way are just dirt tracks.’

      ‘There’s a bus to Cloud that stops twice a day at the bottom of our road,’ Corey said. ‘I’ve seen it on the timetable. There’s one at lunch and one back at teatime. I’ll pay.’

      ‘Damn right you will,’ said Max.

      Just then, a car rolled along the seafront and came to a stop next to us. The driver’s window rolled down. It was Neil, in his glimmering midnight-blue Jaguar.

      ‘Alright, son?’ He beamed, showing teeth whiter than the seagull slime on his windscreen. He always looked uglier, each time I saw him, despite the amount of surgery he’d had to fix his nose. Max beamed back at him, loping over to the car and leaning against the door frame.

      ‘Alright, Dad? What time’s the guy coming to pick it up?’

      A Renault Clio